34 INHERITANCE, VARIATION AND SELECTION. 



puppies. Four of these were marked with blue and white, which 

 is so unusual a color with pointers that she was thought to have 

 played false with one of the greyhounds and the whole litter was 

 condemned, but the game-keeper was permitted to save one as a 

 curiosity. Two years afterwards a friend of the owner saw the 

 young dog and declared that he was the image of his old pointer 

 bitch Sappho, the only blue and white pointer of pure descent which 

 he had ever seen. This led to a close inquiry and it was proved 

 that he was a great-great-grandson of Sappho; so, that, according 

 to the common expression, he had only one sixteenth of her blood 

 in his veins. 



Mr. Day mentions 20 the case of a fox-terrier which had a pecu- 

 liarly graceful action, and was supposed to be of a "perfectly pure" 

 breed. Careful inquiries showed that a remote ancestor had been 

 crossed with an Italian greyhound, and this ancestor had trans- 

 mitted his graceful movements to this fox-terrier. 



Another peculiar case is given by Mr. Darwin. 21 A cross had 

 been made between a setter and a spaniel, and this half-breed was 

 crossed with a pure setter. After several successive crosses with 

 pure setters a male was produced without any apparent traces of 

 spaniel. This apparently pure setter was coupled with a pure setter 

 female and produced spaniels. 



Mr. Darwin also gives 22 the case of a breeder who once crossed 

 his fowls with a Malay race and subsequently wished to get rid 

 of the foreign blood. After forty years of effort he was unsuccess- 

 ful, as some fowls showing the effect of the Malay cross were 

 continually appearing. 



(20) The Horse. 



(21) Animals and Plants. 



(22) Ibid. 



